On Controversial Strings

[Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>]

"I know it when I see it" -- the remark made famous by U.S. Supreme Court 
Justice Potter Stewart (regarding possible obscenity) may equally be applied to 
controversial strings at the top level of the DNS.  

All of us intuitively recognize those language elements that are controversial. 
 We require no objective standard, yardstick, or element of international law 
to inform us that national, cultural, geographic, religious and/or linguistic 
sensitivities might be or are being ruffled.

What something is controversial -- we all know it (and that includes the ICANN 
Board).

As a matter of good policy, no controversial strings should ever be allowed 
into the root -- frankly, we don't need the headaches.

As the GAC has indicated, "the absence of any controversial strings in the 
current universe of top level domains to date contributes directly to the 
security and stability of the domain name and addressing system (DNS) and the 
universal resolvability of the system."

It makes good sense to listen to the GAC on this point.

That said, some in the community have asked for objection procedures to be 
established in order to ensure that certain proposed or anticipated 
controversial strings don't become top-level domain names.  

In my view, this is overkill... as long as an ICANN policy clearly states that 
"no controversial strings will be allowed into the root", I would feel 
comfortable trusting the Board to recognize that which is, or isn't, 
controversial and I would trust the Board to keep such strings out of the root.

The issue at hand is the failure of the GNSO to re-write their poorly written 
policy recommendation.  

I guess that some folk just have a hard time admitting when they have made a 
mistake.

What we are seeing here is an effort on the part of the GNSO through this 
rec6WG to treat this matter as merely an implementation issue by acting to 
develop implementation guidelines.  This is totally the wrong approach, and 
everyone with common sense knows it.

Meanwhile, others in the community have stated that they want a very very high 
threshold set so that it becomes difficult for the Board to deny any particular 
TLD application.  This too is overkill.  Normal majority rules should apply.  

I concur with the Board Resolution adopted in Trondheim that states:  "The 
Board reserves the right under exceptional circumstances to individually 
consider an application for a new gTLD to determine whether approval would be 
in the best interest of the Internet community".

We put good people onto the ICANN Board so that they may exercise their best 
judgment.  It will be sufficient to let the Board do its job when it is guided 
by a clear policy, namely a policy that unambiguously states:  "no 
controversial strings will be allowed into the root".

I recommend to the GNSO that they stop playing at word games and re-draft their 
policy in keeping with the community consensus on this matter.  

We don't want controversial strings in the root.  It's that simple.